Watchlist Wednesday: Honda VF1000R
By Scottie Redmond
Does time heal all wounds? Do eighties bikes get better with age? Is a Honda VF a good investment? These must be some of the questions our Scottie Redmond is asking himself when he looks at his ebay watchlist this week...
Do I ever learn from my mistakes? The fact that this Honda VF1000R is even in my watchlist is all the proof that I need to admit that ‘no I don’t’. Let me explain…
I had a poster of one of these V4 beauties on my bedroom wall back in 1985. Most other teenage boys would have opted for a Sam Fox (if you don’t know her, google it. Or probably best not, if you’re on a company computer…) pin up pinned against the artex - not me: I had a big poster of a Honda!
It would be another 10 years before I bought my first VF1000R. The bike was a stunner, but it was also 10 years old when I got my hands on it; not old enough to be a classic and no longer current enough to have a wide appeal. It didn’t stop me shovelling my hard earned cash into it.
The bike wasn’t a trinket purchase, it was my daily rider. For months it delivered me safely to my workshop in Romford, around 10 miles away from home. The once poster bike of the Honda range had slid into the cheap(ish) thrills sector of motorcycling. Me and my VF got on well, right up to the point when it ate itself on the A12 one weekday morning.
My post mortem result showed it had eaten its own crankshaft; pieces of detonated crank and resulting bits of swarf had been pumped around the motor until I had rolled to an embarrassing halt.
Those early V4 engines all had their own issues, and I’ve seen no end of VF500Fs, VF750Fs and others over the years that have destroyed their motors. Thing is, if you find an example that is still going now, chances are it is a good one! Unless of course it has been sat for ages.
Despite my original bike eating itself, I went on to own a few more VF1000Rs but none held that same sense of wonder that my first one did.
That being said, I wouldn’t rule out buying another one, and prices for good ones are all over the place. I’ve seen some appear with price tags of £10,000 plus and others that look straight for around £6,000. This one is priced at £8,250 and sits firmly in the middle of the price pack.
Ebay Listing: NO LONGER LISTED
